Should my story's main obstacle be secret or common knowledge to the society?If you do keep it secret (from the characters and the reader), then you'll have a mystery-element card to play. So long as you do it right and keep the reader wondering what it is, then it's a good plot device. Beware, though, that the reader has to get hints about it if it's the central plot piece or else the story will be only about discovering the secret; not very interesting.

Publishers favoring, or temporary initiatives tailored for, young authors@Standback, yeah, well, it was just an example and I can't say I liked it. But I can't compare it to my writings either because of natural bias to my works. The example still holds albeit without the 'hell-inside-out-promotion' because there's no way I'm doing this; first off, I can't financially, and second, I hate it when people do it with a mediocre work so I won't do it. If, at this early stage, I couldn't fit in in any way, then I'll just hibernate the works for a bit.

Jun30

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Publishers favoring, or temporary initiatives tailored for, young authors@standback, Well, the material's not 'young' per-se but I know of some success stories (more or less) that were encouraged by the writers showing talent at a young age (a la Eragon) so it's more like one more line in the resume than anything else. The reader doesn't need to know about it unless the company is making competition (or something close) to specifically promote young authors; my question is vague on this because I don't mind either type.

Coming up with names for species in fiction?Quite a long way but here goes: you do know that most animals and plants have long Latin designation names because it's a relatively-known-yet-dead language, right? Following that model, I'd suggest making something like Na'vi Lang. (of Avatar), creating the long scientific names for your species from it, then making the names smaller by any language evolution means you see fit.

Jun21

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Does my story beginning hook the reader? (dialogue + narration)?@alexchenco, Not sure about the others' opinions but I'd say "Write numbers in letters when in dialog." It's just that dialogues sometimes have phonetically spelled colloquialisms, usually used to show 'relaxation in conversation and informality'; this leads to an expectation of spelled numbers. Again, not sure.

Style signatures and uncommon formatting patterns-The signature part is, diverse. I felt it was related but couldn't really explain how. -However, regarding the said-tags word choice, I intended to make them invisible just like "said." Maybe a little variation here and there but I wouldn't say "said in a low voice" when I have "whispered." -The only way to really tell is a test run but I don't have that big an audience for my blog (globally, that's about 3 persons) so I can't test it.